


Memories Pressed Between The Pages Of A Book

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Flowers, Gen, Help I Made Myself Sad, Pre-Stream (Critical Role)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 13:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17265134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: “What are those?”For a second, Molly thinks he might have dreamt the question. Yasha doesn’t talk very much, and she rarely asks questions, which suits Molly just fine. Still, he cracks open one eye and looks in the direction she’s looking. All he sees is a clearing by the side of the road filled with tiny purple and blue flowers.





	Memories Pressed Between The Pages Of A Book

There’s precious little down time when you work for a carnival. You’re either setting up a tent, trying to promote the show and draw a crowd, helping everyone with their hair and makeup, or packing everything up again so you can go to the next town. At least, that’s Molly’s experience with the carnival thus far. The only down time he tends to have is when they’re traveling to the next town, and right now he’s making the most of it. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze between a tent pole and Yasha, but he’s not so uncomfortable that he can’t catch a nap in the warm summer sun. He’s in that comfortable place right between waking and sleeping when the question comes.

“What are those?”

For a second, Molly thinks he might have dreamt the question. Yasha doesn’t talk very much, and she rarely asks questions, which suits Molly just fine. Still, he cracks open one eye and looks in the direction she’s looking. All he sees is a clearing by the side of the road filled with tiny purple and blue flowers.

“Those flowers? I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re pretty, aren’t they?”

“Flowers.” Yasha says the word like she’s never said it before. It’s like the time she asked what the green stuff on the ground was. Everyone else had looked at her oddly, but it had been Molly who had explained to her about grass. “Do they have a purpose?”

“Well, some flowers are medicinal, though I couldn’t tell you which ones. Some turn into fruit, like strawberries or blueberries or apples. Some smell nice, and some don’t smell at all. Mostly they’re just pretty. Sometimes people make bouquets out of them and give them to people they fancy. Or they lay them on graves.”

Yasha gazes out over the field for a long moment, then she’s up and over the side of the cart, striding toward the clearing.

“Where’s she off to?” Molly hears Ornna ask.

Molly just closes his eyes and turns his face back up towards the sun. “She’ll be back. She always comes back.”

************

Molly doesn’t hear Yasha come back in the night, he’s a deep sleeper when he sleeps. She’s there when he opens his eyes again though, sitting cross legged in front of him with a pile of blue and purple flowers in front of her. The blossoms are drooping already, the petals looking wilted and small when she picks up a handful of them.

Molly yawns and props himself up on one elbow. “Looks like you have half the meadow there.”

“They die so quickly,” Yasha replies softly.

“If you stick the stems in water they’ll perk back up again for a little while.”

“Just a little while?”

Molly nods. “Flowers don’t last very long once they’ve been picked.”

“Oh.” Yasha’s voice grows softer, her breath barely stirring the petals in her hands.

Molly doesn’t ask people about their pasts or their personal business as a rule. He couldn’t care less about what people got up to before he met them, and it’s easier to get along with folks the less you know about them. Yasha has never asked Molly about his past, and that’s just fine with him. So he’s surprised when the words come tumbling out of his mouth.

“Did you have someone you wanted to give them to?”

Yasha bows her head over the flowers, her hair covering her face and her hands. She doesn’t answer, but the gesture speaks volumes.

The call for breakfast comes then and Molly sits up and stretches. When he turns to look at Yasha again, she’s gone, only the dying flowers remaining to mark where she had been.

*************

Another day of travel, and Molly spends it staring at the road and at the fields, looking at flowers as they pass as if they were new things. He remembers when flowers _had_ felt new, when the blossoms of snapdragons had seemed a marvelous thing, the beauty of them important enough to be the first flower he had gotten etched onto his skin. That was one way to make a flower last. There were others.

The cart is passing another field, and the smell of clover in the summer sun makes Molly smile. It’s a good, fresh smell. There are bees flying among the clover blossoms. Molly wonders if Yasha has ever seen bees. She hadn’t even known what flowers were, and where had she come from where there were no flowers?

He’s leaping out of the cart before he knows it, swords at his sides and pack slung over his shoulders.

“Oh not you too,” Molly hears Ornna say as he strides towards the clover.

“I’ll catch up!” Molly says over his shoulder with a grin.

It takes him an hour to find what he was looking for, an hour well spent in the sweet smelling clover, in the sunlight, with only the hum of bees for company.

****************

It’s three days before Yasha comes back with the morning sunrise, hair tangled, another notch in her sword and claw marks along her ribs. Molly doesn’t ask questions, just picks the tangles from her hair and applies salve to her wounds.

“The crowd turnout was just miserable yesterday,” Molly says as his fingers work at a particularly stubborn snarl. “With the storm and all. Can’t be helped, of course. Clear weather tonight will double the crowds, mark my words. After a day inside, everyone needs an escape.”

Yasha doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t said anything since she came back.

“Did you find any more flowers?”

Yasha reaches into her pack and pulls out a few blossoms almost the same color as Molly’s coat, the stems wrapped in a scrap of wet cloth.

“I figured out a way you can keep them.” Molly reaches into his coat and pulls out the only book he owns, handing it to her.

Yasha looks at the book and then back up at him, her expression grim, her fingers tapping on the gilded words on the cover. It’s only then Molly remembers what he had been told the book was called, back when it had been given to him. It had been partially a joke, he had been sure. At any rate, he had never read it.

“Oh no,” Molly says with a chuckle. “There’s no need to teach you etiquette, you’re already naturally charming. No, look inside.”

Yasha opens the book to the middle and there is a four leaf clover sitting in the middle of the page.

“If you press flowers in the pages of a book, they stay pretty, if somewhat flat. Then you can take them with you.” Molly points to the four leaf clover. “It’s not a flower, but four leaf clovers are lucky.”

Yasha’s hand hovers over the page. “I don’t believe in luck,” she whispers, and there is a catch in her voice.

“Well I do, so I’ll believe in it for the both of us, how’s that?”

Yasha picks up her red flowers and places them inside the book before closing it, hands pressing down on the cover.

“Thank you, Molly.”

“You are very much welcome,” Molly says with a grin. “Now let’s go drum up some business for tonight. If we finish early, we might have time to go look for flowers before the show starts.”

“I’d like that,” Yasha says, tucking the book very carefully amongst her few other belongings.

***************

Hupperdook is iron and steel and fire and noise, and the only flowers are silk, beautiful and bright imitations of nature. Molly loves them of course, and presents one to Yasha later with a flourish as she’s looking at her flowers.

“It won’t fit in your book,” he says with a laugh. “But it won’t die either,” he says as he tucks the silk blossom, purple and blue, behind Yasha’s ear.

“It’s beautiful,” Yasha says, her book open in front of her.

Molly nods towards the pages. “It’s almost full,” he says. “What will you do when it is?”

He knows now who she’s been collecting flowers for, the secret shared on a night when both their heads had been too loud and the drink had flowed freely in the dark.

“Then I’ll go back home and give them to her,” Yasha says simply. Her fingers brush the blossom in her hair. “I might keep this one though.”

“You should,” Molly says. “Something to remember me by.”

“As if I could forget you.” Yasha closes the book and puts it back in her pack. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

“Nothing could keep me away,” Molly says with a grin. “After all, who else is better at watching your back?”

***************

It’s early spring, but there’s still snow on the ground when Yasha visits Molly’s grave for the second time. Snowdrops surround the grave marker, Molly’s coat still hanging from the stout stick against all odds. She reaches up into her hair, removing the silk blossom Molly had given her what seemed like a lifetime ago. It’s a bit tattered, stained with water and blood, the colors faded from the sun.

“I know you said I should keep this,” Yasha said quietly. “To remember you by. But I couldn’t forget you even if I wanted to, and it doesn’t seem right to take something of yours without leaving something of mine.”

She tucks the silk flower into the pocket of Molly’s coat and gently picks a snowdrop from his grave. She opens her book to the last available spot, right next to the four leaf clover. She places the white blossom next to the clover before closing the book, hands tightly gripping the cover.

“I still don’t believe in luck,” Yasha whispers to the snow, to the grave, to the flowers, to Molly.

A hand on her shoulder, a soft chuckle in her ear. _Well I do, so I’ll believe in it for the both of us, how’s that?_

Tears fall in the snow, swift and silent as a cloudburst, then she stands up and brushes away the tears as she turns around. She looks at her friends, her new family, and there is always that place where Molly should be, just like there’s always that empty spot in her heart that aches for her wife. She holds her book close to her chest and the ache eases, just a little.

“All right,” Yasha says. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write something about Yasha's book ever since it was revealed that Molly was the one who gave it to her in the first place, but the idea sat around in my drafts folder just short of forever until, you know, Ashley destroyed us all emotionally. 
> 
> I'm angel-ascending over on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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